Abstract
In this study, we compute the correlation functions of Wilson(-'t Hooft) loops with chiral primary operators in the supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory with gauge symmetry, which has a holographic dual description of the Type IIB superstring theory on the background. Specifically, we compute the coefficients of the chiral primary operators in the operator product expansion of Wilson loops in the fundamental representation, Wilson-'t Hooft loops in the symmetric representation, Wilson loops in the anti-fundamental representation, and Wilson loops in the spinor representation. We also compare these results to those of the super Yang-Mills theory.
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I. INTRODUCTION
The holographic duality between the maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory (SYM) with the gauge group and Type IIB string theory on the background is the most studied example of the AdS/CFT correspondence [1]. The vacuum expectation values of Wilson loops are natural observables in gauge theories, and they are also calculable from the AdS side. In the string theory description, a Wilson loop ① in the fundamental representation is related to a fundamental string with the worldsheet ending on the AdS boundary along the contour of this Wilson loop [2, 3]. The on-shell action, with the boundary terms from the Legendre transformation [4], yields the prediction for the vacuum expectation value (vev) of this Wilson loop at large N and large 't Hooft coupling , when the classical string theory becomes a good approximation with large string tension and small curvature. This holographic prediction matches the field theory results in the large N and λ limit. The field theory results were obtained based on the conjecture that the computations can be reduced to the ones in the Gaussian matrix model [5]. Later, this conjecture was proved using supersymmetric localization [6]. This match provided a highly non-trivial check of the AdS/CFT conjecture since the vev of a Wilson loop is a non-trival function of λ and N. Higher-rank Wilson loops in gauge theories are dual to D-branes carrying electric flux on the their worldvolume [7−10]. When the rank of the representation is sufficiently high, the back reaction from the D-branes must be considered. A Wilson loop in the higher-rank representation with mixed symmetries is dual to a certain bubbling supergravity solution [11−13]. We will not discuss such supergravity solutions in this paper.
Specifically, half-BPS circular Wilson loops in the rank-k symmetric representation of the gauge group correspond to a D3-brane with the worldvolume and k units of fundamental string charge [7]. Half-BPS circular Wilson loops in the rank-k anti-symmetric representation of the gauge group have a bulk description in terms of the D5-brane with k units of fundamental string charge [8]. These D-branes are -BPS and preserve the same isometries. While a 't Hooft loop, which is the magnetic dual of a Wilson loop, can be obtained using S-duality in SYM. A general transformation maps a Wilson loop to a Wilson-'t Hooft (WH) loop [14]. It was proposed in [15] that a WH loop in symmetric representations of both the gauge group and its Goddard-Nuyts-Olive (GNO) dual group [16] (the Langlands dual group) is dual to a D3-brane carrying both F-string and D-string charges. More details on such WH loops will be provided later in this section.
A circular Wilson loop can be expanded in a series of local operators with different conformal dimensions, when the probing distance is much larger than the radius of this loop. Half-BPS chiral primary operators (CPOs) are an important class of operators with protected dimensions appearing in this operator product expansion (OPE). The OPE coefficient can be extracted from the correlation function of a Wilson loop and local operators [17]. In the large N and λ limit, the correlation function of a Wilson loop in the fundamental representation with a CPO can be derived by calculating the coupling of the supergravity modes dual to this CPO to the string worldsheet [17]. Similar procedure can be used to compute the correlator of a higher rank Wilson loop with a CPO using D3 and D5 branes and replacing the string worldsheet by the brane worldvolume [18]. These results were confirmed by the field theory side using the matrix model [18, 19]. The reduction to this matrix model computations was later confirmed by supersymmetric localization [20].
The SYM theory with the gauge group has some features different from the theory. For odd N, the group is non-simply-laced, and the S-dual theory has the gauge algebra [16]. In this case, the gauge algebras before and after the S-duality transformation are different. This is distinct from the S-duality transformation of the theory with the gauge group . For even N, the group is simply-laced and the dual theory still has the gauge algebra . Another notable feature regarding Wilson loops in theories is the presence of Wilson loops in spinor representations.
In the string theory, SYM can be realized as the low energy effective theory of coincident D3-branes atop a suitable O3 plane. Based on this, Witten proposed that the SYM is holographically dual to the string theory on the orientifold [21]. The five-dimensional real projective space is obtained by the five-dimensional sphere by identifying antipodal points, . This correspondence was recently studied in [22]. It has been demonstrated that the expectation value of the Wilson loop in the spinor representation of the gauge group, calculated through supersymmetric localization [22, 23], precisely matches the result obtained from the D5-brane, with its worldvolume including the subspace of . The holographic descriptions of Wilson loops in the fundamental, symmetric, and anti-symmetric representations were also studied, and the holographic predictions of their vevs exactly matched the results of supersymmetric localization [22,23]. In this study, we compute the correlation functions of Wilson(-'t Hooft) loops with CPOs of SYM with gauge symmetry. The considered line operators include the following:
● Half-BPS circular Wilson loops in the fundamental representation of the Lie algebra , .
● Half-BPS circular Wilson loops in the k-th anti-symmetric representation of g, .
● Half-BPS circular Wilson loops in the spinor representation of g, .
● Special half-BPS circular WH loops. Recall that WH loops [14] are labelled by with the identification
Here, and are the weight lattices of g and , respectively, is the GNO dual group [16] of g ② , and W is the Weyl group of g and . We focus on the case in which the W-orbit corresponds to the n-th symmetric representation of g and the W-orbit corresponds to the m-th symmetric representation of . We label these WH loops by 's.
The paper is organized as follows. In Sections II and III, we briefly review the dual string description of the theory and the half-BPS CPOs with their gravity duals. In Sections IV, V, VI, and VII, we compute the OPE coefficients of these CPOs in the OPE expansion of the Wilson loops in the fundamental representation, the WH loops in the symmetric representation, the Wilson loops in the anti-fundamental representation, and the Wilson loops in the spinor representation, respectively. The final section lists our conclusions and provides a discussion. In Appendix A, we briefly discuss the coefficient of the bulk-to-boundary propagator of a certain mode in .
II. THE STRING THEORY DESCRIPTION OF THE THEORY
Four-dimensional SYM with the gauge group is dual to the Type IIB superstring theory on the background with Ramond-Ramond (RR) -form fluxes [21]. We also choose "discrete torsion'' of the RR -form . We will describe this discrete torsion later. In the large N and large 't Hooft coupling limit, the IIB supergravity on is a good approximation of this superstring theory. We set the radius of , to; then, the metric of is
The RR -form flux is
where and are the volume forms on and with unit radius, respectively.
From , one obtains that [22] in the large N limit,
which leads to
by using the relation in the case [22] and the definition of the 't Hooft coupling .
The discrete torsions for the Neveu-Schwarz -form and the RR -form are defined through
where we use inside . When the gauge group of the dual theory is . When , the gauge group of the dual theory is .
III. CPOs AND THE CORRESPONDING SUPERGRAVITY MODES
We plan to compute the correlation functions of half-BPS CPOs and various loop operators. These CPOs are constructed using the six scalar fields , which are in the adjoint representation of and the vector representation of , the R-symmetry group of this theory. Such CPOs are
with . Here, the trace is taken in the fundamental representation of , and is in the traceless l-th totally symmetric representation of . We choose to satisfy
here, is defined as . Since 's are anti-symmetric matrices, l should be even for non-vanishing . This constraint is new compared with the case in which the gauge group is .
For , the holographic description of is expressed in terms of fluctuations of the background fields in the IIB supergravity on , ③
where and are the background fields (2) and (3), and and are fluctuations.
The fluctuations dual to half-BPS CPOs are [24]
Here, with being coordinates in the part and part, respectively. in (12) assumes the traceless symmetric part. is the "scalar spherical harmonics'' on satisfying,
They are in the representation of , and we choose the normalization of to be the same as the one in [24]. Since , locally is the same as the scalar spherical harmonics on . Δ is dual to the conformal dimension of the CPO. For the case at hand, we have since it is protected by supersymmetry. Recall that l should be even. In the supergravity side, this is owing to the fact that the projection of the fields on gives the fields on . and are the anti-symmetric tensors corresponding to the volume form of and , respectively. The background five-form field strength can then be expressed as
IV. OPE OF WILSON LOOPS IN THE FUNDAMENTAL REPRESENTATION
We consider the half-BPS Wilson loop in the theory in Euclidean space ,
where the contour C is , , and is a constant unit -vector. The trace is taken in the fundamental representation. For the dual description, we use the Euclidean () in the Poincarè coordinates, such that the metric is
The action of the fundamental string (F-string) is
with the induced metric being
As for the F-string solution dual to the circular Wilson loop, we choose the worldsheet coordinates to be . The corresponding classical F-string solution can be parameterized as [4, 17]
The worldsheet of this F-string has the topology of and is entirely embedded within the region of the background geometry. ④
Taking into account the boundary terms from the Legendre transformation [4], the on-shell action of this F-string is given by [4, 17]
Using (5), we get [22]
Thus, the holographic prediction for the vev of the Wilson loop is
in the large N and large λ limit.
When probing from a distance L much larger than its radius a, the operator product expansion (OPE) of is
where are the conformal weights of the operator , is the i-th primary field, and 's with are its conformal descends.
To extract the OPE coefficients of the half-BPS CPOs with normalized two-point functions, we can compute the normalized correlation of this Wilson loop and the half-BPS CPO , ⑤
where is defined by the two point function of,
Taking the OPE limit where , we have
The goal is to compute holographically, which is the OPE coefficient of the primary operator in the expansion (26).
To achieve this, we need to calculate the change in the F-string action owing to the fluctuations of the background fields dual to [17],
where 's are the worldsheet coordinates and expresses how the string worldsheet is embedded in the spacetime.
Then, we write as ; here, is a source for on the boundary, and
is the boundary-to-bulk propagator with the constant c being ⑥
Then, the correlation function is given by
In the OPE limit, we have
We use these and the fact that in the Poincarè coordinates
Then, from (12), we get
The induced metric is
We have
From these, we obtain
Then, the variation of the F-string action is
Using (31), we get
Now, using (5) and (32), we obtain
Thus, the OPE coefficient is ⑦
We use the convention that the factor is not included in the OPE coefficient, which leads to
The above result expressed in terms of , and Δ is identical to the result obtained in the case [17]. Since the string worldsheet is an subspace completely embedded inside the part of the background geometry, the change from to does not impact the calculation of the coupling between the supergravity modes and the string worldsheet. The relation between and λ in the case is , which has an extra factor of , compared with the relation in the case. The coefficient inside the bulk-to-boundary propagator, c, is . These two effects cancel each other; thus, the results of the OPE coefficients in terms of are identical for both and . However, one should keep in mind that Δ should be even in the case of .
V. OPE OF WH LOOPS IN THE SYMMETRIC REPRESENTATION
In this section, we compute the OPE coefficients of half-BPS circular WH loops in the symmetric representation. WH loops appear owing to the worldlines of dyons that carry both electric and magnetic charges of the gauge theory. In this section, we only consider the case in which the dyons are in the n-th symmetric representation of g and the m-th symmetric representation of . ⑧ When , we get the following Wilson loops in the n-th symmetric representation,
where denotes the n-th symmetric representation of and denotes its dimensionality.
Non-trivially generalizing the results in [7], it was proposed in [15] that for the case, WH loops are dual to D3-branes in . In [22], a D3-brane dual to a Wilson loop in the symmetric representation for the case was given. We expect that generalizing the solution in [15] to the case will provide the dual description of WH loops in the symmetric representation, in the case.
We start with the coordinate system in , such that the metric takes the form [7]
The boundary of the is now at and . In this coordinate, the part of the RR -form potential is
We place the WH loop on the boundary at . We make the following coordinate transformation:
The metric on in this coordinate system is
We only consider the case in which the theta angle in the field theory is zero. This corresponds to setting the background RR zero form potential (the axion), , to zero. Then, the action of the D3-brane on the background is
where
Here, g is the induced metric on the D3-brane, F is the electromagnetic field on the D3-brane worldvolume, is the pull-back of to the worldvolume, and the D3-brane tension reads
where the relations and in the case have been used.
For the D3-brane dual to the above WH loop, we take the worldvolume coordinates to be , and on the worldvolume. We also need to consider the components and of the electromagnetic field strength on the D3-brane worldvolume.
The D3-brane solution, obtained by adjusting the solution in [15] to the case, is given by
Let us introduce a dual 't Hooft coupling ⑨ , , where for , and for . Then, we can express κ as
Taking into account the boundary terms, the on-shell action of the D3-brane is
Thus, the holographic prediction of the vacuum expectation value of the WH is
When we take , this D3-brane solution becomes the same as the one in [22], though in different coordinates. Furthermore, the holographic prediction for is consistent with the results from localization [22] in the large λ limit with κ fixed.
Now, we holographically compute the correlator of and
in the OPE limit , and extract the OPE coefficient . The change in due to the fluctuations of the background field is
where we have defined the matrix , and 's are worldvolume coordinates. By using the result of in the OPE limit given in (38) and the above D3-brane solution, we obtain
Now, we compute the change of due to the fluctuations of the background fields,
From (14), we have
Thus,
From the coordinate transformation (50)−(52), we obtain
Then, the total change of the action is
Using , we can compute as
In the OPE limit, we have
Taking the two integrals, we get
Thus,
Here, is one type of the Chebyshev polynomials, and we have used the fact that Δ is even.
The result for the Wilson loop () in terms of κ is times the results in [18] for the case due to the change of c. ⑩ Here, we provide a brief explanation on this point. Since the worldvolume of the D3-brane is completely inside , the calculations of the coupling between the supergravity modes and the D3-brane worldvolume for both and cases are the same. In the case, the relation between and λ reads , while the relation in the case is also changed compared with the case. However, their effects on cancel each other. The relation between and N, i.e., , is unchanged. Formally, when we express the results in terms of κ and Δ, the only change is from the coefficient of the bulk-to-boundary propagator . This leads to the above conclusion about the OPE coefficients. However, the relation between κ and λ changes in the case of , becoming
while for the Wilson loop in the n-th symmetric representation of in the case, the relation reads
Hence, the result in terms of λ and Δ in the case is not just a constant multiplying the result in the case.
Finally, to compare with the result for in (46), we set in (74) and take the limit. Using in this case, we obtain
which is just , as expected.
VI. OPE OF WILSON LOOPS IN THE ANTI-SYMMETRIC REPRESENTATION
Let us consider half-BPS circular Wilson loops in the rank-k anti-symmetric representation of the gauge group ,
They have a bulk description in terms of the D5-brane with k units of fundamental string charge. The worldvolume of this D5-brane has topology . The D5 description of Wilson loops is valid in the large N and large λ limit with fixed.
We can parameterize the unit ; as
with . Then, the metric of the unit can be written as
with as the metric of the unit .
can be obtained from by identifying antipodal points . One way to realize this is to view as the upper hemisphere of () with antipodal points on the equator () identified. The metric of is thus given by
where when , and is the metric of when .
Hence, the metric of reads
with the radius of and set to . The part of the above metric is written in the form of an fibration for computational convenience, and these coordinates are related to the one in (48) by the following coordinate transformation:
where a is the radius of the Wilson loop.
Using the transformation, we set in (78) to . Then, in , the D5-brane dual to this antisymmetric Wilson loop occupies the in the above metric with and wraps an submanifold of at a constant polar angle (on the upper hemisphere of ) [22]. The D5-brane worldvolume is , and its metric reads
Turning on the worldvolume gauge field to account for the k units of fundamental brane charge, the action of the D5-brane on the background can be written as
where
In the above equations, the tension of the D5-brane reads
and the self-dual 4-form potential is [8]
Here, is the volume form of the unit , , is the volume form of the unit , , and is the volume form of the unit .
The fact that the flux of the worldvolume gauge field equals k, together with the brane equations of motion, gives rise to the condition [8] ⑪
and the worldvolume gauge field is
The on-shell D5-brane DBI and WZ action are
Adding appropriate boundary terms [8], the on-shell action for the D5-brane is
Thus, the holographic prediction for the expectation value of the Wilson loop in the rank k antisymmetric representation is given by
The variation of the DBI part of the action to the first order in the fluctuation and is
where we have used the D5 solution , c.f., (85). The variation of the WZ part of the action to the first order in the fluctuation is given by ⑫
where the 4-form fluctuation is given by
with being the coordinates on and the corresponding measure is
Thus, the variation of the D5 action to the first order is given by
The normalized correlation function between the Wilson loop and the CPO is evaluated as
Recall that
where the bulk-to-boundary propagator
and the D5 solution . The only integral operation one needs to perform is
Hence, we obtain
where we have used the following results for the invariant harmonics [18] ⑬
and
The normalization factor is obtained from
yielding
We then obtain
Using the recurrence relation [29, 30]
we finally arrive at
This result is identical to that for the case obtained in [18]. The D5-brane worldvolume has topology with in the part of the background geometry and in the part. Since , the we consider in this case is the same as the embedded in determined by in the parameterization given in (79). Thus, the computation of the coupling of the supergravity modes to the -brane is the same as that for the case, although the expression of in terms of λ and N for the case is different from that for the case.
In the case, we have , while for the case the relation is . Taking this change and the relation into account, we arrive at the conclusion that the OPE coefficients in the case are the same as the ones in the case. Thus, in the limit, the relation remains the same as that in the case. This can be obtained from the result in this limit and
VII. OPE OF WILSON LOOPS IN THE SPINOR REPRESENTATION
Now we turn to the half-BPS circular Wilson loop in the spinor representation S of ,
The dual description of this Wilson loop is in terms of the D5-brane whose worldvolume has topology [21]. If we still chose the to be , the embedding of the D5-brane is given by in the coordinates used in the previous section [22]. In this case, the field strength of the worldvolume gauge field vanishes. Taking into account the boundary terms, the total on-shell action of this D5-brane is
so the holographic prediction for the expectation value of the Wilson loop in the spinor representation is [22]
As observed in [22], , given by (93), vanishes when . A shortcut to compute the OPE coefficient using the result obtained in the previous section is by setting in and dividing the result by to take into account the change of the D5-brane worldvolume from into ,
Here, we have used the fact that, for even Δ,
obtained from the following generating function of the Gegenbauer polynomials :
VIII. CONCLUSION
In this study, we investigated the holographic duality of the SYM theory and the Type IIB string theory on the background in the large N and λ limit. To this end, we investigated the OPE coefficients of half-BPS circular Wilson loops in various representations. Wilson loops were expanded in terms of local operators when the probing distances were much larger than the sizes of the Wilson loops. The coefficients were extracted from the expansion for the operators we considered. Our focus was on the half-BPS CPOs and their corresponding gravity duals. Specifically, we computed the correlation functions of local CPOs and the Wilson loops in the fundamental representation, the symmetric representation, the anti-symmetric representation, and the spinor representation. We studied the Wilson loops in the symmetric/anti-symmetric representations through their dual D3/D5-brane descriptions. The appearance of the Wilson loops in the spinor representation is a new feature in the theories. In addition, we discussed the WH loops in the symmetric representation using a D3-brane with both electric and magnetic charges. The SYM theory with the gauge group has some features different from the theory. We compared our results with those of the SYM theory.
APPENDIX A: THE COEFFICIENT c OF THE BULK-TO-BOUNDARY PROPAGATORS
In this appendix, we compute the coefficient c of the bulk-to-boundary propagator of the modes . The action for , obtained from the full "actual" action of IIB supergravity [31] is [24]
where is given by
where κ is the coupling constant of type IIB supergravity, and is explained below. Using
and the relations and for the case, we obtain
which is same as the one for the case. is defined by
The expression for is
which equals to half of the result in the case since the integration is over . Using the above result, we obtain
The coefficient of the bulk-to-boundary propagator is
where [17]
which is identical for both and cases. Finally, we obtain
which equals times the result for the case.
Footnotes
- *
Supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (11975164, 11935009) and Natural Science Foundation of Tianjin (20JCYBJC00910, 20JCQNJC02030)
When , . And when , . Here for even N and for odd N.
We use the notation that refer to the coordinates in , refer to the ones in the part and refer to the ones in the part. The underlined indices refer to the target space ones.
In the following, we will sometimes use AdS to refer to EAdS for simplicity. It is expected that this will not result in any confusion.
is the coordinate in .
Here y is the image of Θ under the map . This also applies for the case of the D3 brane in the next subsection.
A more precise description of such WH loops was provided in Section 1.
There is a sign typo in [18] when the result was finally expressed using the Chebyshev polynomials.
Here we restrict . Then we have . It is proposed [22] that the D5 brane doubly wrapping at is dual to the antisymmetric Wilson loops with for even N.
Here and in the following, we have used the fact that integrating over selects the invariant harmonics. Then the harmonics only depends on .